A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  “You left Milly.” Zakiya was my judge, as she ought to be.

  “I didn’t want to leave her!” The guilt poured into my boiling cauldron of emotions. I had wanted too much, and that had caused other people to suffer and die. Who would have cared for Milly after I disappeared? Who would have loved her as much as I did? My chest hurt worse and the light in the room dimmed. Hands grabbed me and kept me from toppling onto the floor. I struggled to breathe.

  Alex and Setek carried me rapidly by the arms, back down the corridor to the emergency rooms, my toes dragging the floor. Zakiya led the way. As she reached the room where we had left Jessie’s body, she stopped and opened the door.

  Some of this narration is reconstructed from later discussions because I could barely determine where I was, much less hear and remember words which were not English. All I could think was that I had lost them both, Jessie and Milly. All I could feel was helpless and hopeless. Prior to Zakiya opening the door, I was told the following words were spoken: “The last thing I saw was his face. And there was so much pain in it! I was trying very hard not to die, but that was all I saw in his face - the shock and horror of knowing I was going to die. I never wanted to hurt him! I only wanted him to be happy. I wanted to give him a gift that I knew must make him happy. If we were a family, I thought, then we would have a home, even if we never found Earth.”

  Then Zakiya opened the door. Then she said: “Aylis! It’s Sam! He’s dying!” Then Aylis said: “The hell he is!”

  “Sam? Sam! Sam!”

  It was Jessie speaking! Jessie was alive! My spirit was electrified and my body responded as well as it could. I stumbled forth into the room, Alex and Setek still holding me, restraining me.

  “Sam, would you tell her to be silent and concentrate on her job?” Aylis requested. “And don’t die until I give you permission!”

  “Sam!” Jessie cried. “They wouldn’t let me see you! The baby!” Jessie

  shouted a Korean obscenity that burned my ears and made me smile.

  “That was a damned good push!” Aylis grabbed at something hidden by the tent over Jessie’s knees. Nori was right beside her with a towel. Mai stopped whatever it was she was doing for Jessie and took two large strides to view what had happened. The three of them conversed in Standard and did things hidden from my view. They were intensely serious for agonizing moments, until Mai grabbed Aylis by the shoulders and Nori broke into a big smile. The next sound we heard was … a baby’s complaint at being born! They worked furiously for a few moments and paused.

  Then Mai said, “You were right! Look at the trend of her vitals. Sam is doing better, also.”

  “And good morning to you!” Aylis said to the baby.

  Aylis looked at me and blinked her blue eyes, which made tears run down her flushed cheeks. She seemed almost in a state of shock. Nori had to help her walk around to me. Jessie found my hand and gripped it so tightly I had to tear my gaze from Aylis to see the exhausted and worried look on Jessie’s face. Very shortly, trembling and weakened, she relaxed her hand.

  Alex and Setek finally released me to let me lean against the bed and be nearer to Jessie. Aylis took small steps approaching us. Alex and Setek were privileged to view the bundle in Aylis’s arms before she handed it down to Jessie. The bundle was too quiet. But it was quite alive and awake! Its eyes were open and already appearing to track the faces around it. It seemed to look at me, perhaps accusingly, or so I deserved. Then it looked at its mother. I think it smiled.

  I helped Jessie hold the baby. I could feel Jessie shivering with emotion and taking excited gulps of air into her lungs as she touched the infant’s face and stared into its wise little eyes. This moment in time transfixed me, as a new mother gazed so lovingly at her newborn. Our newborn. I blinked my eyes clear. I looked around at everyone in the birthing room and saw pure happiness on every face. It was a miracle. I thought no one could imagine what a miracle it was. I was sure they couldn’t imagine how powerfully it affected me. My friend, my love, my life - my Jessie - risked dying to put such meaning into our lives.

  I had ignored the risk, until she grew heavy with child. It terrified me as I suffered the realization of how many things could go wrong. Weeks of terror had passed. My only hope was that the Protector would know what to do. Guilt ate at me. It was impossible to hide my fear from Jessie. My fear became hers. My guilt became a towering burden. When Jessie went into labor I felt helpless. When she couldn’t deliver on her own and began to bleed I could do nothing heroic or sane or intelligent. I just cried and let her die. Then my mind took its leave. I never washed the blood from my hands. I never ate. I never slept. How much time passed before the Protector found a way to bring us to the Freedom? How deep is hell, how long its dominion?

  Mai and Nori continued to work on Jessie while the rest of us admired the baby. It had eyes like its mother’s but of a color neither mine nor hers. It still seemed able to focus on our faces, which was precocious. It looked last at Zakiya and we followed its gaze to see Zakiya weeping.

  “Are you unhappy?” Jessie asked, reaching a trembling hand toward Zakiya.

  “I’m very happy,” Zakiya answered, taking her hand. “Thank you for sharing this wonderful moment of your life with me!”

  “You were right, Sam,” Jessie said to me as she released Zakiya’s hand.

  “Humans come in many colors and they’re all beautiful. I’m so happy.” Jessie closed her eyes. Aylis tried to retrieve the baby but Jessie wouldn’t let go, weak as she was. Then Jessie began to weep. “Thank you! Thank you! All of you! I must… I… so tired.” Jessie took a deep breath and lost consciousness. Everyone looked at Aylis.

  “She needs rest,” Aylis said. “I had to quiet her. They both do. We’ll let them sleep together. Mother and child.”

  Section 004 Questions and Answers

  We stayed at the hospital while Aylis and her staff tried to solve the biological mysteries of my family. I couldn’t pay much attention to their efforts, even though it should normally have fascinated me. My mind was still wrong. Why did I know Jessie completely, and yet feel she was so exotic and magical, as though I was meeting her for the first time? She was my companion forever, my wife, and the mother of my miracle child. Yet, she was suddenly fresh in my experience of her, suddenly overpowering, suddenly the center of my reason for existing. I was sensitive to every small detail of her appearance and enraptured by her every word or action. I could hardly believe she was real from one moment to the next. She was exquisite and she was alien. How did a poor boy from Earth become so rich in companionship?

  I remembered Jessie when I first met her. She was such a brave little being, trying to interact with the big alien from Earth. I think I always assigned a female gender to her because she was obviously not male. Servants never wore clothing because they had no physical or social need. They were covered with a shimmering nap of tiny golden discs that were feathers with microscopic structure. Elongated feathers adorned their faces, and much longer hairy feathers crowned their heads. They had no gender, no reproductive organs. None of them stood more than a meter tall with their limbs folded and they varied in size and shape and color by tiny amounts. It took me years to be able to identify individuals, although I always knew which one was Jessie.

  Jessie had evolved. I knew that as a fact, because I remembered what she was in the beginning, and I knew this was the same Jessie who breathed trustingly in her sleep beside me. I knew the original Jessie from the decades of life with her that I still remembered, with every discovery of her character and capabilities still sharp and marvelous in my memory. I knew this current Jessie as thoroughly as though she was a part of me. I could look into her eyes, listen to her voice, watch her face-feathers, appraise her lithe body, and know what she was thinking and feeling. All of those missing centuries in my memory must have ingrained and deepened a subconscious familiarity with her.

  She was close to human now. She had grown to nearly my height. She had filled out to a
slender approximation of human female proportions. She wore loose clothing that allowed her natural golden covering to breathe. Her feet had no toes and required no shoes, although she wanted to wear something on her feet because she said her soles were losing their toughness. Her hands had four nail-less digits with a palm that folded lengthwise for gripping, and she somehow added a thumb to its structure over the centuries. The thumb was a joy to her because she could hold my hand better. Perhaps I hadn’t seen humans in such a long time, that her nonhumanity now presented itself to me for fresh inspection. I found myself staring at her and adoring her. Only the tiny bundle in my lap was as profoundly exotic and lovable.

  Jessie also seemed mentally disrupted, and all I could do was worry about her. Her death, resurrection, and miraculous motherhood should have traumatized her, but I think the baby kept her together. She loved the baby with a passion that radiated outward to touch everyone. It kept me from stepping over the edge into my personal black hole of memory loss.

  And so, while strange human beings from a future-distant place subjected us

  to endless examinations and asked us questions we couldn’t answer, we huddled together as a new family and waited for the fuss around us to subside.

  Aylis came to our hospital quarters one morning. Instead of her medical uniform she wore a simple maternity dress. I remembered Aylis emotionally, paying little attention to her physical appearance. As she sat down across from me I looked up from the baby in my lap and noticed how young she was. I was yet to learn to measure a person’s age by their eyes. She was a very attractive woman, but with a unique structure of character in her pale face. She wasn’t a movie star; she was a real person with real feelings that made her face an interesting and memorable landscape. I tried to fit this image of her into the turbulence of my memories of her. She didn’t fit. She was someone else, or my memory was defective. “Memory.” I said it to myself, although Aylis heard me clearly.

  Jessie stirred from her nap. She was up late nursing the baby.

  “What about memory?” Aylis asked softly. I shook my head. Aylis’s kind face clouded with concern and disappointment. “I was hoping you would recover from whatever this is. You haven’t said ten words to me since the day you got your memory - and Jessie - back.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Recover memory. I lost it. That’s what’s wrong.”

  “Which memory? I thought you recovered it, not lost it.”

  “I remember more. But there’s still a large gap in my memory. I’ve lived too long. I can only remember that I used to remember more. I can’t hold it all anymore.”

  “How old are you, Sam?” She knew when I was born but I thought I understood what she was asking. Time can be a tricky thing to measure, out here among the galaxies.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t remember how many vibrations of the atoms of what element made a human second. I don’t know if my circadian rhythms averaged to a good approximation of a human day, or if I adjusted to Servant time. I only know I’ve lived continuously for a very long time and I can’t get at all the memories in between the first sixty years of my life and the last few years.”

  “You lived all seven hundred thirty-five years since you were born?” Aylis was amazed and excited at getting that piece of data from me. I nodded in reply as Jessie rolled over and put her face next to the baby, kissed its golden head. “With no age treatments, no rejuvenation?”

  “Not that I remember. I grew old before Jessie and I embarked on our search for Earth. Somehow I stayed alive and became younger during the voyage. I’m sorry I was too quiet. I’m getting better, but something disturbing is still taking place in my mind. I’m tired. I can’t think clearly. My emotions are overworked. I just want to go home with my family.”

  “I’m sending you home. That’s what I came to tell you.” Aylis looked at us for a very long moment, as though trying to make the image indelible in her memory. “Go on. Get out of here.”

  I had to bring Jessie home in a floater - the modern, antigravity version of a wheelchair. Jessie was crippled by her horrendous labor. Her body had somehow compensated to minimize damage to her and the baby during labor. Oxygen deprivation had concentrated its damage to her legs and one arm. Servants, I told Aylis, could recover completely from most injuries without medical help. But I wanted her to check Jessie thoroughly and often. Jessie had already regained some feeling. She reminded me of Milly, and she knew she did, and she tried not to compete with a memory she thought was sacred to me. I had to restrain her from trying too hard to make her legs work or trying to avoid the floater chair. She would drag herself across the floor before she would ask to be put into that chair. I was just relieved she was apparently not seriously damaged mentally.

  Home was not in the Protector. I expected it to disappear from our lives. It had brought us to this outpost of Earth. Its job was done. I assumed it would find its way back to Jessie’s home world. I didn’t think about it much, even though the Protector was my entire world for most of my life with Jessie. The absence of its silent omnipresence would leave a big hole.

  We settled into a daily routine in our apartment by the lake. We rose early to feed and bathe the baby. I ordered breakfast and did the few chores not handled well by automated devices. I could see the Protector floating above the center of the lake from the kitchen window. It didn’t depart, as I thought it would. It must have further business with Jessie and me but I didn’t want to think about it.

  After breakfast Aylis made her house call while I cleaned the kitchen. I was pretty sure Aylis had never before made house calls. I understood her desire to see Jessie and the baby in person and I was grateful. Aylis was fascinated by them. “Do you have a name yet?” she would ask every day.

  A name. Our baby had no gender. There were a few human names that might be given to male or female. It was too difficult for me to decide. I wanted Jessie to name the baby. Hopefully time would reveal a name.

  “You have very unusual DNA,” Aylis said to Jessie one morning. This was an understatement, because I could interpret the perplexed look on Aylis’s face to mean she understood little about Jessie’s DNA. “I don’t know how you were able to become pregnant by a human. Perhaps I’ll never know!”

  I don’t know why Aylis brought this up, because we covered the subject before, more than once. I suppose she couldn’t believe Jessie didn’t have the answers she so desperately wanted. It wasn’t that Jessie’s people were lesser intellects, as the name Servant might imply - far from it. But it was hard to imagine why the Servants never applied their ample curiosity to the mysteries of their own biology. They never wondered why they never became ill. If they were injured they always healed perfectly. I was their first example of an imperfect organism. Only after my arrival did they take an interest in biology.

  “Everything happened gradually,” Jessie patiently replied. “And it was always what I wanted. I don’t know how or why I was able to give Sam a baby. It’s a great mystery and I think I can appreciate how complex it must be.”

  “Are you sure the baby has any of my DNA?” I asked. I still needed to be reassured I was really the father of Jessie’s baby.

  “Quite sure,” Aylis replied, reluctantly handing Nameless back to Jessie.

  “Even though you can’t understand Jessie’s DNA?”

  “You’re right to question my judgment in this case. My confidence is less science than intuition at this point. This is a revolution in genetics. I’m not telling you everything we’ve discovered - I haven’t explained it to myself yet. But I know this child has something in its genes that isn’t from Jesse, something that looks human, and it must be from you. And the baby isn’t even the most interesting mystery in your family, Sam.” Aylis got up to leave and frowned at Jessie, before relaxing into a smile. I knew what she was about to say, because I knew Jessie was her most interesting mystery. “How did you become female?” She muttered it to herself, a phrase that
escaped her almost every time she was in Jessie’s presence. “Your DNA is a paradox inside an enigma. It’s very exciting for me, and also humbling. I thought I knew a lot about genetics. Apparently I don’t.”

  “Is our baby well?” Jessie asked.

  Aylis smiled the answer. “In as much as it’s human, it seems perfect. I think you would know before I, if there was something wrong. I only hope my little girl is that strong and beautiful.” She rubbed her pregnant stomach. “Are you still having discomfort, Jessie?”

  “Some.” Jessie looked thoughtfully at Aylis’s inflated shape. “When can I have another baby?”

  Aylis started to react to the statement, then saw Jessie’s little smile grow larger. She patted Jessie on the shoulder and said, “You keep that man out of your bed until we test a good contraceptive for you.”

  Jessie waited until Aylis turned to depart, then said: “Why would I want a contraceptive?”

  Aylis turned back to Jessie, to be met with a very human expression of feigned innocence. Aylis opened her mouth to start a lecture, then must have decided it was best to assume Jessie was being facetious. After Aylis was gone, Jessie laughed and gave me a certain look with a swirl of face feathers. She wasn’t joking. I was content to let her enjoy the moment. I wouldn’t try to balance her notion of parenthood with what little I could deduce of the possible problems ahead. Part of the instinct to reproduce must be the automatic ignorance of the consequences.

  I spent several hours each morning trying to catch up on centuries of history. Jessie was interested in human history, too, but required far less repetition than I did. I had to see things over and over, because there was so much I couldn’t believe the first few times I saw it. Why did tragedy always get top billing in the human epic? Why was idiocy such a powerful trait? I felt ashamed to have Jessie learn human history. I had warned her.